ifted by each wave and hammered over the sand into shallower
water, so that the drenched and buffeted lifeboatmen had to lift anchor
and follow the drifting vessel in the lifeboat, and again drop anchor
and veer down as before. All this time three powerful steam-tugs were
waiting in deep water to help the vessel, but they dared not come into
the surf where the lifeboat lay.

To stop the drift of the wrecked Iron Crown was her only chance of
safety, and it would have probably ruined all had they dropped anchors
from the vessel's bows, as she would have drifted over them and forced
them into her bottom. The Deal men, therefore, with seamanlike skill
and resource, swung a kedge anchor clear of the vessel high up _from
her foreyard_, and as the vessel drifted the kedge bit, and the bows of
the vessel little by little came up to the sea, when her other anchors
were let go, and in a few minutes held fast; then with a mighty cheer
from the Deal men--lifeboatmen and lugger's crew all together--the Iron
Crown half an hour afterwards was floated by the rising tide on the
very top of the fateful sands; her hawser was brought to the waiting
tug-boats, and she was towed--ship, cargo, and crew all saved--into the
shelter of the Downs.

The names of this the first crew of the Deal lifeboat are given
below[1], and their gallant deed was the forerunner of a long and
splendid series of rescues, no less than 358 lives having been saved,
including such cases as the Iron Crown, by the North Deal lifeboat and
her gallant crew, and counting 93 lives saved by the Walmer lifeboat
Centurion, and 101 lives saved by the Kingsdown lifeboat Sabina, a
total of 552 lives have been saved on the Goodwin Sands.

The next venture of the Deal lifeboat was not so fortunate. It was
made to the schooner Peerless, wrecked in Trinity Bay, in the very
heart of the Goodwins. The men were lashed in the rigging, and the sea
was flying over them, or rather at them; but all managed to get into
the lifeboat except one poor lad who was on his first voyage. He died
while lashed on the foreyard, and was brought down thence by Ashenden,
who bravely mounted the rigging and carried down the dead lad with the
sea-foam on his lips. Among the rescuers of the Peerless crew were
Ashenden, named above, Stephen Wilds (for many years my own comrade in
the Mission Boat), brave old Robert Wilds, Horrick, Richard Roberts,
and ten others.

I have told of the first rescue effe